


The Suzumiya Project

by seasonalarchangel



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 01:00:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18042455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasonalarchangel/pseuds/seasonalarchangel
Summary: After a family tragedy rocked Eriko Suzumiya's life, she moves to her uncle's manor where she spent her time preparing for funerals and starting the school year  not only after having missed two weeks of work, but also in a new school.Ouran Academy, a school for the children of Japan's most rich and powerful. Certainly bigger and better than Eriko's last school, she hoped to resume her life as normal, until the host club shows up.





	The Suzumiya Project

The days after her family's deaths couldn't have gone any slower. And yet they passed by like time was nothing. Strange how grief does that to you. Or maybe it wasn't the grief, but her cousin's conspiracy theories that were crazy enough to be true.

Two weeks had gone by in that slow-but-fast blur, with most of Eriko's time spent locked in her new room. Having her things moved into her uncle's mansion, making preparations for her parents' funerals, and deciding what to do with her family's belongings were the only things she could remember with clarity.

The fire had damaged most of her family's mansion, leaving only a few rooms of her childhood home unscathed. Her room was mostly engulfed in flames, so there weren't many things for her to need to be moved, but a few other areas- like the second-floor parlor and part of the library- needed someone to decide what to do with their contents. Eriko had countless adults telling her she didn't need to bother herself with these things. That she should be mourning, and that she had people who could do these things, instead.

But they really didn't. Who else knew her family more than she? Who else could give them the burials they knew they deserved? No one. Eriko's parents always spent so much time working, they hardly ever saw other family members other than the occasional dinner or birthday call. And her sisters hardly left the house, the introverts they were.

But all that seemed like years ago for Eriko. The day she had to beg to spend the night at her uncle's home because her cousin, Kenji, was in Bunkyou. Early the next morning when the smoke was discovered. Kenji running off the night after the funerals. Such a long time ago. And yet, not long enough.

*-*-*-*

This had to be one of the worst school days Eriko could remember. It topped the day Hinako Tsuwabaki spilled tea on six-year-old Eri's uniform and made a joke of it, and it was by far worse than the day an entire tray of spaghetti went flying and hit her in junior high. Those instances were laughable compared to today.

First, the uniform didn't fit right. Eri kept mentally kicking herself for moping for so long and not bothering to try it on until that morning. Embarrassingly, she needed the help of two maids to get it on, and even then, it was constricting her breathing and it hugged her abdomen too tightly. In addition, the skirt was too short, hardly reaching her knees, and it was one of the few times Eri had ever hated how tall she was.

Her hair was sticking forward at odd angles, and no matter how much she tried, Eri couldn't fix it. Her hair was too short to put up, so she had to settle with an old light blue headband that had made its way into Eri's room. It's probably been years since she'd even seen the thing, and it clashed horribly with the bright yellow of her uniform. The stockings were probably the only thing acceptable about her uniform, and she made a mental note to have someone notify the school about getting a uniform that fit.

The second problem was that with all the time she lost trying to make her uniform work, she had no time to eat anything, and by the second period, Eri was starving. Eating too much in the mornings usually made her nauseous, but there was only so long she could last without at least a slice of toast.

And then there was her introduction. The story of her family's murder had been on every major news network nearly every day since they were discovered. Constantly reminding the world that there'd been few leads and even fewer suspects. Eriko had known that many students would immediately make the connection after hearing her name, but what she didn't expect was how brazenly her peers whispered about it when she came in the room.

She could feel pointed stares from the back of the class, and when the first period had begun, she was asked to introduce herself to the class. Eriko heard someone whisper "Have you seen the news? We know who she is," and there were a chorus of muffled giggles following.

That line had made her simultaneously want to punch the boy, and burst into tears. Hopefully, the barely suppressed laughter was at the snide comment and not at the implication of how her family got on the news this time. Instead, she had to compose herself and make sure her voice kept steady as she introduced herself.

"My name is Eriko Suzumiya," she'd said. "I look forward to being here."

She couldn't care less if she came off as rude or anti-social as long as she could get it over with. She quickly made her way back to the seat she'd claimed, and took out her composition book and a pen.

Classes had been okay, and thankfully no one tried talking to Eriko during the breaks in between. She caught a few classmates throw her pitying glances, and she saw a short boy waving at her a couple of times, but she ignored them all, pretending to be engrossed in a book. In reality, she could hardly comprehend a single sentence.

Lunch came sooner than expected, and she was grateful she could get some time away from her 3-A classmates. Scooping her book and bento under an arm, she walked out of the class, nearly getting trampled by the rush of people. Eriko decided to go in the opposite direction.

Eriko faintly heard someone call out her name behind her, but she turned a corner and walked briskly toward one of the courtyards on the campus. She ended up by what seemed to be a maze, and Eri being Eri, decided to enter it. At least it would throw off whoever called out to her. That was if they'd even followed her all this way.

Eating as she went, Eri took every right, and eventually came to a small covered area. She sat down and finally allowed herself to relax, managing to lose herself in her book, entranced by the rebellion of a lost moon princess. Until someone cleared their throat.

Startled, Eriko jumped in her seat and dropped her chopsticks and cursed. She hastily picked them up and set her book down, and she looked up to see two boys.

The first was dark-haired and looked to be a few inches taller than Eriko. He had a fairly neutral expression on his face, but it was the complete opposite as the other boy's.

The second Eriko recognized after a moment. He was one of her classmates that she caught looking at her earlier. Except he was the one who waved, instead of whispering whatever gossip about her they thought they knew, like the others. He was blond and short, and could probably pass as a junior high student. Grade skipper, maybe?

The blond was the first to speak. He gave her a sweet smile and hugged a stuffed rabbit close to his body. "Eri-chan! Didn't you hear us calling after class? We wanted to say hi, right Takashi?"

He looked up to the taller boy, presumably Takashi, and he nodded, not saying anything.

"I guess I didn't, sorry. I just have a lot on my mind at the moment," she replied, looking back at the smaller boy.

"That's alright! We know being the new kid can be kinda stressful! My name's Mitsukuni Haninozuka, but you can call me Honey! This," he said, looking up at 'presumably Takashi', "is Takashi Morinozuka, but everyone calls him Mori! And this is Usa-chan!"

At the end of the boys' introductions, Mitsukuni, or Honey, held up a pink rabbit toy and wiggled it's stubby arms around. It was a pretty cutesy toy, and Eriko thought it definitely fit Honey's style.

"It's nice to meet you three," she said giving a subtle wink at the bunny. Growing up with imaginative little sisters made it easy for Eriko to go along with pretending Usa-chan was real.

Honey beamed at her, and he seemed to remember another reason the two followed her.

"Hey Eri-chan! Since moving schools can be stressful, if you need someplace to relax, you can come to music room three after school to relax! We have lots of cake and tea and cookies and sweet stuff to eat!" Honey began jumping at the mention of sweets, and he started rambling about different types of pies they'd probably have that afternoon.

Eriko wasn't one to turn down cakes for any reason, even if she didn't particularly know the person giving it to her, so she agreed and waved as Honey and the ever silent Mori left to eat their own lunches.

An unfortunate downside to their meeting was that Eriko was bombarded with memories of a very similar acting little sister. She couldn't help but think little Sumiko would make fast friends with the short, bunny-loving third year.

But Mori also reminded Eriko of Kimiko, the middle child. She had always been a girl of few words, going until age five without saying a single word, even though Sumiko had begun speaking the year before.

And boy, Sumiko was a babbler. She could say enough words to make up for the quieter Kimiko, and the two always acted like they were twins, Sumiko even going as far as to tell complete strangers on the sidewalk that they were twins.

And Eriko knew as long as she spent time with Honey and Mori, she'd have constant reminders of both happy and sad times. Hopefully, it wouldn't change the taste of the sweets.

*-*-*-*

The host club seemed to be the perfect definition of controlled chaos. With seven large groups of people in the third music room, there was noise from every corner, and every once in a while, there was a chorus of shrill squeals.

Eriko nearly left the club after first hearing the squeals-that-bordered-on-screams, but she steeled herself. After all, there was cake on the line. She wasn't yet acquainted with the staff at her uncle's mansion, so asking them to make her a cake would be out of the question, and store-bought never tasted quite good. The cake Honey had promised earlier would be worth a bit of discomfort. She was sitting across from Honey and Mori with two underclassmen when she got the first taste of the cakes, and holy hell they were good. Eriko was never one for excessive amounts of sugar eating, but if she could have some cake every time she came, she'd come every day. She hoped she wouldn't become dependant on the hosts' sweets.

In the time since she'd arrived, she'd found out a few things.

Number one, exactly two weeks later would be the dreaded physical exams. Number two, the cookies were just as delicious as the cake. Number three... Honey was a boss at the cute and adorable act.

Sure he was convincing, and she bought into it at first, but there was something familiar about the way Honey carried himself and the way he spoke. Once again, he reminded Eriko so much of her youngest sister. And if they were as similar as they seemed, there was no way Honey was as innocent as he seemed.

"Eri-Chan! Do you want some more cake?"

She nodded and thanked Mori when he set a new plate on the table in front of her. Eriko, even as a small child, rarely stopped eating before she ate half of the food prepared, and she certainly wasn't about to stop now. She just hoped the hosts would still let her come by after they realized how much she ate just this afternoon.

*-*-*-*

Eriko knew who was on her balcony without having to look.

It was just past midnight, and pitch black outside, and no matter how much that scared Eri, it made her relax a little knowing it would be hard for anyone to follow Kenji here.

"Hope it hasn't been too boring without me here," Kenji said as he entered the room. "How was the first day?"

Eriko shrugged and motioned for her cousin to be quieter. Even though it was late, there were no doubt a few servants roaming the halls who could easily recognize Kenji's voice and spoil the point of a covert midnight meeting.

"Not as many pitying glances as I expected, and far fewer tried speaking to me, so added bonus, I guess," she told him. It's not like she was asocial, it was just that a transfer in Eriko's third year wasn't something she'd been looking forward to. The curriculum was similar, but after missing the first few weeks, Eriko was already swamped with work to make up.

"You seem to be doing a lot of guessing these days. C'mon, I'm gonna need your sharp mind to help with my latest findings. Or are you too busy for my conspiracy theories?"

As much as they both wished, though, they knew there were too many coincidences for this to just be a conspiracy theory. As far as the two were concerned, the Suzumiyas were being systematically murdered. And as far as Kenji had found, the murders had gone back to their great-grandparents. That's four generations in danger, not counting the two cousins, already missing half of theirs.

The Suzumiya family had long been in the architectural business, and the cousins' great-grandfather's father had split the corporation between his son and daughter, rather than giving any to his longtime associate, who ran much of the company after his boss' health started to deteriorate. He'd reportedly sworn vengeance on the whole family, and promptly went off the grid.

After that was when Kenji and Eriko suspected the murders started. It was a stretch to think that their great-grandparents, Yuichi and Reichiru, were killed in their mid-nineties, so it was easy to see why most would have doubts that their deaths were anything but natural. Hell, that was even what their cause of deaths had been listed as. Yuichi's sister, Minako, had died in her early thirties, but there were medical records of her cancer, so there was no reason to believe she was the first victim.

Kenji rushed to Eriko's desk and put his messenger bag on her seat, taking out a couple of manila folders.

"Well," he started, "I found out the exact suspected causes of our dear ol' great-grandpa's death. It turns out that Mr. Yuichi Suzumiya had a bad ulcer problem. Apparently, this was what the coroner suspected, so he took a peek at the stomach lining, and what did he see? A hole six centimeters across. The ulcers can be fatal, but not usually if it's caught in time, so I researched it and took another look into his files."

He seemed to be getting a little louder with each detail he shared with his cousin, getting more animated and invested in the explanation. Eriko hoped he had the sense to keep his voice low, otherwise, the two might have some unwelcome company. But nevertheless, he continued with large gestures.

"The ulcers were thought to have been eradicated with a series of treatments, and a couple of surgeries for the larger ones. Anyways, I wouldn't trust the coroner even if I saw pictures. The guy was exposed just a couple years ago for taking bribes to flub the autopsies of high-profile murder victims. Remember the Mischa Dare case? He was the medical examiner who concluded she 'slipped and fell' down that embankment and drowned on her own. That was one that he was bribed to cover up."

Everyone knew about the Dare case, even though Eriko had only been ten when it happened. Mostly because it wasn't every day a university European exchange student turned up drowned. Another reason was that, like Kenji had said, just a few years ago, a second autopsy was performed after the first was found to have major inconsistencies with new evidence. It turned into a national scandal and was imprinted in everyone's mind for the next few months.

Eriko nodded slowly at her cousin. "So he isn't a reliable source, and there was a record of the ulcers being successfully treated... so it's not clear what caused the hole if it was even there. Are there any kinds of poisons or toxins that could've caused it? Or some kind of little-known side effect of a medicine he was taking?"

Kenji shook his head, frowning a little. "So far I haven't been able to find anything on it online. But Ouran has four libraries with books on pretty much any topic, so you might have better luck?" He scratched the back of his neck, shyly, as if he didn't think it would turn up anything, but it was better than what Eriko was thinking. That maybe it was just a strange situation.

No one wants to believe that their family is being hunted down or to live with the fear that they might be next. That they could be mad that Eri wasn't in the house that day. But no one wants to believe that their family was killed in a freak accident, with no rhyme or reason behind it, either. No one wants to see four coffins lowered into the ground with the only reason being fate. That almost made the grief worse; that if it really was just fate, that there would've been nothing that could've prevented Eriko from being alone. Nothing that could've saved even one of her sisters.

Maybe that was why Eriko had been so inclined to believe Kenji when he told her his theory about murders. Maybe it gave her a sense of purpose? That she was left behind to bring her family's murderers to justice? That she and Kenji were the only hope for the rest of their family? Everyone wants to be the hero of someone else's story, don't they?

She and Kenji agreed to meet two weeks later, and in the meantime, Eriko made it her job to research different ways that could've possibly given her great-grandfather a holey heart. And she made a silent promise to herself, as Kenji left.

If she couldn't find a reasonable explanation backing Kenji's theory by their next meeting, she'd drop the notion of murder completely.


End file.
